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The US Is Preparing to Prosecute Julian Assange

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Re: The US Is Preparing to Prosecute Julian Assange

#311

Post by azernik »

cwkoss wrote: post #255
paulie_a wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think he is too dumb to realize he was used as a Russian asset. The attention whoring he is known for blinded him. While dumb, I don't think he has specifically kept secrets about Trump. His actions show a definite agenda. Act two, he just doesn't realize that it is someone else's agenda.

If the New York Times gets an anonymous tip from a Russian spy (which is fact checked and found to be true), would you consider the New York Times as a Russian asset? Where is the line? When is transmitting factual information to the public journalism and when is it not?

If they then release it without reporting on context, taking the Russian source's politically-motivated narrative at face value? Absolutely. Same as if they're acting as a politician's assets if they do likewise with an anonymous political source, only with the added twist of international politics.

Re: The US Is Preparing to Prosecute Julian Assange

#312

Post by resters »

oh-kumudo wrote: post #258
hnmonkey wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While some of the things that were exposed were certainly illegal and should be handled as such, it's hard to feel any empathy for a guy who is essentially a Russian asset. If you think of him as an extension of Russian military intelligence conducting propaganda wars against its adversaries then it becomes a lot easier to understand why prosecuting him is a genuinely good thing. Russia airing the dirty laundry of ot…

It is clear that Assange is both libertarian and anti-globalist. His attitude towards 2016 elections is predictable and consistent with his world view.

I don’t think we can infer anything about Assange’s political views from the 2016 election. He strongly opposed both candidates but running Wikileaks in a principled way is obviously more important to him than who wins an election in the US.

Re: The US Is Preparing to Prosecute Julian Assange

#313

Post by azernik »

coretx wrote: post #307
komali2 wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's an obviously absurd belief given he's in an embassy. The USA has done a lot of insane shit but that would be a ridiculous line to cross to eliminate a single "criminal."

I'll give you some absurd and ridiculous details. When the WL backend for collateral murder was hosted at bahnhof in Sweden, moving it to .CH was among other reasons done because of certainly the US, and specifically & allegedly homeland security having launched a DDOS attack so strong it could have kicked Sweden offline. When US agents started their smearing campaign against Assange in Sweden, they accidentally adde…

Again - going from there to drone strikes (against an embassy in an allied country with a sophisticated air defense system) is absurd.

Re: The US Is Preparing to Prosecute Julian Assange

#314

Post by azernik »

anon007 wrote: post #202
komali2 wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's an obviously absurd belief given he's in an embassy. The USA has done a lot of insane shit but that would be a ridiculous line to cross to eliminate a single "criminal."

US/NATO bombed the Chinese embassy [0] in former Yoguslavia so nothing is out of the question. Though this is UK. But still it shows embassies are not outside of US target zone. [1] https://www.theguardian.com/world/1999/oct/17/balkans

In a country with which it was at war and with a badly degraded air defense system. Not against an ally with sophisticated, undamaged weaponry.

Re: The US Is Preparing to Prosecute Julian Assange

#315

Post by jMyles »

tootie wrote: post #283
jMyles wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not me. I still think that his efforts have cast very important light on the recent history of US Foreign Policy.

Assange is simply not an honest broker which is his one job. Even if you think the Chelsea Manning leak was valuable, what exactly was Assange's value add? The leaker was not protected. She was caught and prosecuted. The data was not protected. WikiLeaks was hacked and leaked all the raw data. The content was not shared in an objective way. Assange editorialized the content with his own opinions (ie Collateral Murder…

If this sort of assessment is the case against Assange (in terms of his character as a journalist), then I think he has a very strong case.

> The leaker was not protected. She was caught and prosecuted.

You're talking as if Assange or WikiLeaks disclosed the source.

Are you suggesting that a journalist has a responsibility to protect a source unto the ends of the earth, even when that source openly and flatly confides in an (in retrospect, untrustworthy) friend that she has leaked what she knows to be classified material?

How exactly was Wikileaks supposed to respond? By somehow tracking down Adrian Lamo and ensuring that he didn't report her? I'm just astonished at this part of your indictment.

> The data was not protected. WikiLeaks was hacked and leaked all the raw data.

"Hacked?"

WikiLeaks published the entire cache of documents - and I celebrate them for it. I have personally read over 600 pages (probably a thousand at this point) and I have yet to encounter one of them that I, as a United States citizen, believe was rightly withheld from my view by my government.

WikiLeaks took care to redact some proper nouns from these documents, but provided unredacted versions to some journalists, along with painstaking, easy-to-follow instructions about preserving them. Nevertheless, a (much more ostensible respectable) journalist at The Guardian posted the passphrase and the files were leaked.

In what universe is this a failing of WikiLeaks OpsSec? "Hacked"? What can you possibly be talking about?

The only security compromise about which I'm aware on the part of WikiLeaks was a problem with their web frontend which briefly allowed a group to change it to a juvenile message. No documents were involved.

> The content was not shared in an objective way. Assange editorialized the content with his own opinions (ie Collateral Murder).

...so? What's wrong with that?

Let's keep things in perspective here: a person flying in a helicopter intentionally fired an explosive missile at a person standing on the ground. I know we're all pretty numb to this happening at this point, but I think it's still pretty shocking when you think about it.

Maybe he did think that he was firing on someone carrying an RPG. So? It's still a crazy act, carried out during an illegal war. Calling it "Collateral Murder" doesn't turn me off in the slightest.

> There's a reason why Ed Snowden didn't give his leaks to Assange.

I appreciate the way that Ed Snowden conducted himself. He took a different approach and one that is welcome.

I also think that Ed Snowden's criticisms of WikiLeaks are substantially more honest than yours. Can you explain why you've characterized these things in such a strange way?

Re: The US Is Preparing to Prosecute Julian Assange

#316

Post by scythe »

How do they plan to get him out of the embassy without violating the Vienna Convention? He's been amazingly... immature and disruptive... in the embassy, but has there ever in history been a case of a refugee being remanded to their oppressor because of how annoying they are? To be fair, Assange seems to be really annoying.

Re: The US Is Preparing to Prosecute Julian Assange

#317

Post by nl »

wallace_f wrote: post #246
hnmonkey wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's literal proof throughout this post. In fact, I posted some too. There are definitely levels of threats to American democracy. If DWS refers to Wasserman-Schultz then it pales in comparison to an enemy foreign state's military intelligence corrupting the American government.

See you keep saying you can convince me, but still wont show me the proot that will. Do you really believe the Iraq Warlogs revealing death, torture, war crimes, and lying is somehow worse than literally subverting American democracy in a presidential primary? Now, I don't want to defend Assange's every single motive, but the DWS scandal was pure corruption, while for whatever bad Assange has done that you keep promi…

I'm not American, but.. I'm very confused.

By "DWS scandal" do you mean the Debbie Wasserman Schultz issues[1]? I've read about that reasonable extensively, and they don't seem a huge deal to me at all. I mean it's good she resigned, but to me it looks more like a "perception of bias is as bad as bias itself" thing.

She probably did some things that benefited Clinton in the primary, but these don't seem that big a deal in the scheme of things.

The Wikipedia link I posted seems a reasonable summary. Which of them exactly is this big threat to democracy? For example, I thought the "removal of Sanders access to database" was a big deal until it became apparent that Sanders staffers had accessed private Clinton campaign information and it was restored in less than 24 hours[2].

What am I missing?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debbie_Wasserman_Schultz#2016_...

[2] https://www.npr.org/2015/12/19/460361192/dnc-restores-sander...

Re: The US Is Preparing to Prosecute Julian Assange

#318

Post by colordrops »

rdtsc wrote: post #298
thanosnose wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But if "all a man is, is what others say of him," then by watching the news, Assange is just a Russian agent. One of the most interesting aspect of the assange story is how the news industry celebrated assange in the early part of the 2010s and then started to demonize him in the past few years. It was all so sudden as if someone flipped a switch and everyone got on the same message. It's also interesting how sexua…

I think his case will be closely studied for years. And it is how propaganda works. There is no coordination between the 5 or 6 or however many media outlets but it seems as if there is turn almost based on how quickly he went from a martir to Russian puppet in just a year or less. Same thing kind of happened to Greenwald though to a lesser degree.

> There is no coordination between the 5 or 6 or however many media outlets

What evidence do you have for that claim?

Re: The US Is Preparing to Prosecute Julian Assange

#319

Post by AnIdiotOnTheNet »

eeks wrote: post #32
Apocryphon wrote: post #4

So much for WikiLeaks thinking there was a lesser evil back in 2016

Wikileaks believed at the time that Clinton was ready to send a drone to get rid of Assange. Between due process and a drone attack, I take due process any day.

I've seen the American justice system in action, "due process" is a joke.

Re: The US Is Preparing to Prosecute Julian Assange

#320

Post by ForrestN »

eeks wrote: post #32
Apocryphon wrote: post #4

So much for WikiLeaks thinking there was a lesser evil back in 2016

Wikileaks believed at the time that Clinton was ready to send a drone to get rid of Assange. Between due process and a drone attack, I take due process any day.

There is absolutely no evidence of this, either that Clinton was "ready to send a drone" or that Wikileaks actually believed she was. Taking at face value the statements of the organization regarding this would be extremely naive.
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